Tag: Ernest Hemingway

This week’s Friday LBC topic has been suggested by Lin who has already written the post well in advance. Her take on the subject is very different from what mine will be, due primarily to cultural differences.

My earliest recollection of ringing those bells was of ringing a bell attached to the handlebar of a tricycle. As I grew up larger bells with different tones came into play just as small bicycle replaced the tricycle and larger bicycles kept pace with my growth. Our mother would wait eagrely for the sound of those bicycle bells to announce our return from school, Boy Scout meets etc and since those days, there were so few automobiles around that the bells really were useful but now I don’t remember having heard one in the last fifteen years or so.

Ernest Hemingway too came into my life at a later stage with his For Whom The Bell Tolls, but, I don’t think that this post should go anywhere near it.

In India, the phrase is used in many contexts and different meanings can be attributed depending on each context.

For instance, in Tamil, when we say, “He rings his bell”, we mean that he is boasting. In Hindi when we say “His bell has rung”, it would indicate that either he is in some deep trouble or that he is dead.

There are also other sayings like when we want to say that the school bell has rung to indicate that the neighbourhood school has begun its classes and it would also indicate a time.

Other uses are common with the West, like when the ice cream vendor comes along ringing his bell or other vendors do too. Each has a distinct tone and regular customers immediately recognise who has come with what.

You would have seen how different my post is from Lin’s and I hope that Shackman’s take will be totally different too.